


Visitor

by Kittenbedtimestories



Category: Who Killed Markiplier? (Web Series)
Genre: Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23421028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittenbedtimestories/pseuds/Kittenbedtimestories
Summary: A visitor comes to The House, which is something that should never happen. Who is she? Where did she come from? And why did she look so much like...him?
Relationships: Celine | The Seer/Wilford Warfstache | William J. Barnum | The Colonel
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on likepuppetsonastring.tumblr.com] So someone came up with the idea of Will and Celine having a kid, and my heart got really sad. So have some word vomit. (Credit to @turquoisemagpie for the neato drawing that gave Winnie her look and gave me the idea.)

Dark was mid-meeting when he felt it.

Someone was in the house. After all this time…he was here now, it’d been so long since he’d been back…but the feeling was familiar.  
He frowned, standing suddenly, earning a curious look from Google, who’d been trying to explain analytics to his uninterested audience.  
“Where’s Wilford?”  
“He’s in his studio, as always,” Google replied, narrowing his eyes, “Why the sudden interest? We were discussing the primary-”  
“Excuse me.”  
Dark moved quickly out of the room, slamming the door behind him. His aura was agitated, greying out the walls of the hallway, making Bim duck into a doorway to avoid it (it was unpleasant to pass through, to say the least) as he strode toward Wil’s sound stage. He didn’t bother to knock as he shoved the door open roughly.  
“Warfstache!”  
Wilford sighed heavily from his position in front of the green screen.  
“Dammit, man, can’t you learn to knock? Jesus.” He rolled his eyes and waved his gun at Jim, behind the camera, who quickly cut the take and scurried out of the room. Everyone in Ego Inc. knew what Dark slamming into a room would lead to.  
“Have you been back to the house?”  
“Are you out of your mind? Why would I go to Mark’s house at this hour? I’ve been here, recording my new show all day. It’s a real winner this time, Dark-”  
“You know damn well I don’t mean Mark’s house, idiot, have you been back to that house?”  
“What are you talking about?”  
Dark scowled at Wilford for a long moment. The fool couldn’t remember, of course he couldn’t. But that meant it hadn’t been him.  
Of course it wasn’t him, mumbled an annoyed voice in the back of his mind, how would he have gotten there and back so quickly? Besides, I still feel it so it can’t be him.  
This bothered Dark even further. He hadn’t heard that voice in years.  
Shut up.  
Dark turned on his heel and walked out, much to Wilford’s confusion. He walked quickly, until he found an empty hall, and reached for one of the doors, concentrating.  
When he opened it, he found himself on the second floor landing. He stared at the railing for half a second, before huffing and walking down the stairs, looking around him for the intruder.

He found her in the foyer, looking…looking in the mirror.

The shattered reflection showed a pair of large, round lenses in bent black frames over two wide brown eyes, the arms curled under bobbed black hair. Her face was angular, but not particularly sharp, and she was smiling curiously. A small slip of a thing, really, her red collared shirt and high waisted black slacks clearly a few sizes too big for her, and the fact that she was lugging a massive leather carrier bag with the strap slung across her body didn’t help with the delicate image. Definitely not your typical looter.  
She looked so much like him, the same silly smile and bearing, hands clasped behind her back as she inspected the antique before her, that Dark stumbled back a step as the old voice in his head yelled out in surprise.  
The noise alerted her to his presence and she whipped around, slapping a hand to the cover flap of the bag as if to grab something from it.  
“Oh my-! Oh, jesus, I-I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone still…but I mean the-the woman in the library said no one had lived here for…no, but that’s no excuse, I’m sorry, I-I’ll just go-”  
“Shut up,” Dark said calmly, having collected himself a bit, but still reeling from the shock. She nearly bit her lip to stop herself, looking down at the ground and clasping her hands behind her back again. God, the resemblance…how…?  
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?”  
“I-I’m Winnie Ford, sir, a-and I’m researching for a school project, about abandoned buildings-”  
“Don’t lie to me.” The stairs below him went grey, and Winnie’s face paled, but he was too distracted to notice.  
Ford? Her name was Ford?  
“Why are you here?” He repeated, more quietly. The air seemed to buzz between them.  
“I…I…” She seemed to be looking for an escape, but sighed as she found none, standing up a little straighter, as if to accept her fate.  
The confidence is impressive.  
No. Stop that.  
“I’m looking for information about my parents.” She said it with false calm, the illusion of which was shattered as she retreated a few steps into the room as Dark descended the stairs and approached her. She bumped into the wall behind her, still trying to appear casual.  
“And why would you come here for that?”  
“Because this was the last place they were seen alive.”  
He froze.  
Something must have registered in his face, becaues the girl frowned at him. “You…you live here, don’t you? Do you…do you know what happened?”  
“What happened in 2017. The poker party.”  
“Yes,” she said, nodding slowly, taking a step closer. He flinched and she reflexively stepped back. “Yes, so you do know about that.”  
He couldn’t seem to move. “Your parents were…there, that night?”  
“So the newspapers say. So the orphanage said.”  
“My god…” The voice coming out of his mouth was one he hadn’t used in a very long time. He hadn’t known he could use it anymore, hadn’t known that the feelings now exploding in his chest, could still exist within this corpse of his.  
“Did…did you know them?”  
“I…no.” He glanced over at the mirror, then back up at the stairs, then looked back at her, barely able to hold himself together. Being here, seeing her, it was too much, he wasn’t going to be able to sustain himself, he should leave, shut down these feelings, eliminate the cause of them…no, that thought made a spike of pain shoot through his chest, and he gripped the table suddenly. Winnie took a few steps toward him, moving as if to put her hand on his arm. “Are you-?”  
“Don’t,” he said harshly, and she stopped, still looking concerned. She was stood right on the edge of his aura, couldn’t she see it? If she touched it…but why did he care? “Don’t…don’t touch me. Don’t come any closer. Please.” The word sounded awkward, unfamiliar on this tongue.  
“Okay…Alright, I won’t.” Her tone was one you would use with a wounded animal.  
She’s not afraid of me.  
Yes, she is. Shut up.  
“What do you know?”  
She leaned against the wall again, still trying to look casual. Why was he relieved when she stepped away? “Well…I know my mother’s name was Celine Noir. But I don’t know who my father was. That’s the only name the orphanage had on file, and,” she quirked a small smile, “that was hard enough to find. I was some kind of cover up, apparently.”  
His eyes were blown wide, he could see them in the mirror, he could feel it. One hand twitched toward her, and he could see himself touching her face, cradling it, hugging her tightly and not having to lose them all over again. He could see himself taking her back with him away from this house, he could see Wil seeing her, coming back to him, he could see himself and this young girl and his best friend, a family once more, remembering, moving on, forgetting this place, forgetting what…what he’d…  
What he was. It came rushing back to him, but…but for this brief moment, he was still himself. He was here, and he was looking at her, and she looked so much like her mother, stood like her father, and god he missed them so much. Suddenly, he was talking, before he could stop himself. Stupid, stupid boy, what are you doing?  
“Your father’s name was William Ford. You’re a bastard, that’s why she gave you up. She hated herself for it, wanted desperately to keep you, but…” But Mark, when he found out he wasn’t the father, went berserk, nearly killed Will right then and there, if he hadn’t stopped him… He took an unnecessary, deep breath.  
She was staring at him, the bluntness of his answer apparently surprising her. “William Ford…that’s where the last name comes from, I guess. I wondered about that, why it wasn’t Fischbach…”  
“No…no, she’d never let you take his name.” Why were his eyes stinging? They shouldn’t be able to do that anymore.  
“What…happened to him? To both of them?” Her voice was very quiet, but god she sounded just like Celine. “Who are you?”  
“I’m…not important.” He took a few steps back. He couldn’t be here anymore. “You should go. Get away from here.”  
Get away from me.  
“But-”  
“Get. Out.” He spoke quietly but the glass divider nearby cracked loudly. It didn’t seem to phase the girl.  
“You haven’t told me who you-”  
“You don’t need to know that.”  
She frowned, giving him a determined look. “Yes. I do. I want to know what the hell is going on. I want to know who I am. I want to know who you are.” She put her hand on the table, it was too close to his, the grey was touching her fingertips.  
“At least tell me your name.”  
He stared at the hand, trying desperately to pull his aura back into himself, but it wasn’t easy to control when his emotions flared up, and it hadn’t happened in so long he had nearly forgotten how. His eyes slowly moved to meet hers properly for the first time, and…  
He was face to face with a teenage boy with a goofy grin and a gun license and a draft haircut, asking this stupid kid with a sweater vest and too many political science books on the table in front of him in the lunchroom why he was sat on his own. He was looking at his sister as she asked him for help, tears in her eyes, she was begging him not to let Mark find out, one hand on her stomach, where a bulge would soon grow.  
He was looking at this girl, maybe twenty years old, who’d grown up in an orphanage, never knowing anything but her own name and her mother’s, and never even knowing her father’s name, who had his confidence and her smile and god, she even looked a bit like him, and his mouth was opening without his consent.  
“Damien.”  
She smiled, a little confused. “Damien.” Why did that name sound so natural in her voice? “Well, it’s…it’s nice to meet you.” She offered him her hand again.  
Why was his hand moving toward hers? He stopped it, pulling it back sharply as he retreated. “You should go.”  
“But…”  
“Winnie…I…you need to leave this place, it’s…” Not safe. He was here. “It’s not where you need to be. You need to go. I’ve told you all I can.” His voice dropped in volume, but not the same way it usually does. This time, there was only one layer, and he sounded so much like…himself. “Please go.”  
He wasn’t sure what she heard in his voice, but it seemed to convince her. Maybe she was finally noticing his aura, maybe she was too afraid to stay with him any longer. She stepped toward the door. Pulled the handle. Took a step. Looked back over her shoulder.  
“It really was good to meet you, Damien.” She had more questions than answers, he knew. She’d probably be back to this place. Her little frown, and the look in her eyes…he remembered seeing that look on another young girl’s face. “You know, there’s something terribly familiar about you.”  
He didn’t answer. Instead, he turned back to the stairs, and climbed back up them, and it was as if he were stepping back in time. He heard the door slam behind him, and paused.  
He was alone again.  
“It was nice to meet you, Winnie.”  
But there was no one to hear the darkness return to his voice. No one to witness as he left this place, empty again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Original note] Alright so a surprising amount of people actually liked the first part of this (thank you @alix-the-skeleton for asking for more!), so I decided to do a follow-up. Lemme know if you guys wanna see some more of this! I think it’s an interesting story to explore. Anyway, let’s see what happens when Dark gets home, shall we?

He was still shaking, physically shaking, when he returned to Ego Inc. His shell was cracking horribly, and his aura was all over the place, cyan and scarlet spikes shooting left and right, cracking the walls and bursting lights. Everyone that saw him come down the hallway ducked away as fast as they could. Everyone, that is…except the one person Dark did not need to see right now.  
“I saw, old man, where’d you scamper off to in such a hurry? Google’s been doing nothing but complain since you left, he’s insufferable.” Wilford laughed as he tried to clap an arm around Dark’s shoulders, but raised an eyebrow in amusement when he shrank away, sucking in a sharp breath as the pain of the sudden movement hit him. The pain of his shell cracking was enough without the extra weight of someone else.  
“Don’t touch me-” he attempted to snarl, but cut himself off. No. Oh God, no, he still sounded like-  
“What’s wrong with your voice?” Wil blinked, looking puzzled.  
He couldn’t not speak to Wil, that would raise too many questions, but the more he talked, the more he knew he was running into dangerous territory, and why did he suddenly care so much, after years and years of feeling nothing but deep-seated anger and frustration? No, he knew why, but still, the sudden shift was unsettling, and he was spiraling. “I…nothing. Nothing, just leave me-”  
“I didn’t know you could turn off the echoes, that’s a clever trick. Have you always been able to do that?” He laughed again, twirling his mustache thoughtfully, seemingly oblivious to Dark’s rising panic. “You know, without the effects, you almost sound like Mar-”  
“Shut up.”  
“Well, I was only saying, I know you hate him, but still, the resemblance is uncanny-”  
I know you hated him. His own voice rang in his ears and he shut his eyes, trying to block it out. “Shut. Up.”  
“You’re really not looking well, are you sure you’re-?”  
“Shut up, William!” Before he could think, his hand was shooting out from his side, and Wil grunted in surprise as he banged into the opposite wall, sliding down to the ground with a dull thud.

Dark’s eyes widened. “Wil…Wil, no, I didn’t mean…”  
“What the bloody hell was that for?” Wil snapped furiously, clambering back to his feet and rushing to grab Dark by the lapel, his other hand coming up in a fist. Dark braced for a hit. “What the actual hell, Damien?”  
Both men froze. Wil’s eyes widened to match Dark’s, seemingly more out of surprise than anything else.  
“Wait…no, your name isn’t…why would I…?”  
“Wil,” Dark said slowly, “let me go. Please.”  
Wil glanced down at his hand, which had a death grip on Dark still, and dropped him as if he were being burned. Dark grunted as he stumbled back, bumping into the wall. Cracks appeared immediately. Wil backed up a few steps, still staring at him.  
“Thank you,” Dark muttered, voice shaking nearly as much as he was, “Now, please, I have to-”  
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Wil gestured off down the hall, shaking his head as if he were trying to clear it. There was an uncharacteristic frown on his face, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “You’re…you’re a busy man, after all, and…and of course, I am too. I should…I’ll…I’ll see you later.” He walked away so quickly he was nearly jogging.

Dark stared after him.  
So he did remember, at least subconsciously. There was still some of the Colonel behind the bubblegum facade. But…if forgetting had done this to him, what would remembering do? And if he found out about her…

What have I done?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Original Note] I’m having fun with this story, more fun than I originally thought I would have, and a couple of you still seem to like it ( @alix-the-skeleton I’m looking at you, pal. ;) ). So I wrote another bit!
> 
> New note - I'd still be more than happy to finish this, if anyone's interested.

The air was cold, tonight, and filled with gentle music from the party still going on inside. William laughed as Celine pulled him along by the sleeves of his uncharacteristically dapper suit, running with him in tow to the edge of the balcony and only letting him go so that she could jump gracefully to sit on the stone railings. She looked beautiful, a bright red ballgown that hugged her in all the right places and flowed, light as a butterfly’s wings, away from her at the hips, her short hair swept neatly underneath a scarlet hairclip. She kicked off her heels and swung her feet, patting the railing beside her.  
“Really, now, Cel, you want me to try that in this getup? I’ll rip something in this bloody monkey suit.”  
“Oh, live a little, Wil,” she laughed as he hopped up anyway. “You’re reckless any other time, why care about some cloth now?”  
“Well, it’s a loan, first of all, if Mark knew I was running about in his suit-”  
“Oh please, as if he doesn’t run around in it enough.”  
He laughed, shaking his head. They went quiet for a moment, listening to the music swell inside, and Wil watched the smile slide off of her face.  
“It’s hard to believe you’re leaving tomorrow. How long will you be gone?”  
“Well,” he sighed, taking her hand and staring up at the stars. They were so bright tonight. “It’s only basic training, so only a few weeks.” A few too many weeks, anyway. “I’ll be home again before you know it.” He chanced a glace. “And you’ve got Dames and Mark to keep you company.”  
“Yes…” She bobbed along to the start of the new song, smoothing her dress with one hand.  
“Wil?”  
“Yes?”  
“What do you think is out there?”  
“Out there? As in, in space?”  
“Yes.”  
He studied the sky for a moment. “Well…stars and planets and all that, of course…some ice, so Mark tells me…”  
“Other life?”  
“You’re asking if I believe in aliens?” He chuckled, and she swatted him playfully.  
“Don’t make it sound silly. It’s totally plausible.” He rubbed his arm, feigning offence, but she brushed him off. “But, no, that’s not what I was asking. I was thinking more…I don’t know. Spirits, or…or powers, or something.”  
“So…God?”  
“Maybe not capital-G God. But yes, something along that line.”  
William took a long time to answer, getting back to his feet as he finally spoke. “I…don’t know, honestly. But I like to think that perhaps there’s more to this universe than we know.”  
Celine smiled, and stood as well. As the music swelled again, she suddenly took his hands, putting one around her waist, pulling him to her as she started to dance. He gaped at her for a second before settling into it as she rested her head on his shoulder.  
“I’m really going to miss you, Wil.”  
He pulled her a little closer. “I’m…I’m going to miss you too, Celine. So much.”  
If Wil could’ve frozen a moment in time, he would have lived right there, with her in his arms, dancing under the stars, forever.

“I think I’m going to ask her to marry me.”  
William was slow to respond. “You’re…you mean…Celine?”  
“Yes, of course I do,” Mark laughed, “who else?” He leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head as he looked over at Damien. “What do you think, Dames? Have I got your approval?”  
Damien smiled brightly. “Mark…of course you have my blessing. God, of course you do.” He stood and embraced him, clapping him on the back as both men laughed. Wil smiled tightly as Mark turned back to him.  
“C'mon then, gents, let’s celebrate.”  
“She hasn’t even said yes yet,” Wil said quietly, but followed the other two to the bar, which Mark leapt over, grabbing three tumblers and a bottle of Fireball and setting them down on the bar. That made him smile a bit as he slapped Damien’s back.  
“Think you can handle a shot or two of this, this time?”  
“Of course I can, don’t be ridiculous,” Damien muttered, smiling slightly as Mark laughed loudly, pouring them each a generous shot. They each grabbed a glass and raised it.  
“To a yes,” Mark said.  
“To a new brother in law,” Damien added.  
“To…us,” Wil said, and the other two grinned at him, Mark nodding and throwing an arm around his would-be brother, agreeing, “to us.”  
They downed their shots and immediately started giggling as Damien choked.

“Wil?”  
“Go away.”  
“Wil, please, talk to me.”  
“No.”  
“William, be sensible. You can’t lock yourself away forever.”  
He shoved the door open roughly, swaying slightly as he glared through his blackened eye at a disheveled Damien, cane twisting in his hands. He huffed and turned away, stumbling back to the quickly emptying liquor cabinet in the corner of his hotel room.  
“And what do you want?”  
“To talk to you, to work things out! Dammit, man, you left so quickly-”  
“OF COURSE I DID!” he roared, and Damien flinched. “THAT BASTARD WAS TRYING TO KILL ME! HE WOULD HAVE, IF HE’D BEEN GIVEN THE CHANCE!”  
“You slept with his wife! My sister!” Damien yelled desperately, and Wil grabbed him by the lapels.  
“You’ve seen what he’s become! What a selfish, pompous son of a bitch he is now! He’s not the man she married! He’s not the same Mark that I grew up with! And she loves me, Dames, she loves me! Not him!”  
“Then let her get-!”  
“Get what, Dames, a divorce? Make her wait, and wait, trapped with him in that godforsaken house-?”  
“BETTER THAN RUINING HER LIFE!”  
Crack.  
Wil stumbled back with a grunt, clutching his face as Damien stared at him, wide eyed.  
“Wil…Wil, no, I didn’t mean…”  
“What the bloody hell was that for?” He ran forward, grabbing Damien’s lapel again with one hand, raising the other as if to hit him. “What the actual hell, Damien?”  
“I-It was an accident, Wil, I didn’t mean to hurt you-”  
“Get. Out.” Wil shoved Damien into the door with a dull thud. Damien looked as if he wanted to say more, but decided against it. He sighed heavily, resignedly, and pulled it open, stepping out.  
“I don’t blame you Wil. And…and I’m sorry.”  
“Go!”  
A bottle smashed against the closing door, and Wil finally broke down, sobbing silently as he curled up on the floor of the vacant, anonymous hotel room, far away from home.

Wilford gasped, bolting upright.  
He’d fallen asleep at his desk, apparently, which wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence. He breathed heavily for a moment, shoving aside some empty bottles as he tried to remember where he was, who he was, what he was doing. The usual checklist.  
His dreams, tonight, they’d felt so…real. So vivid. He tried desperately to remember what they were about, but…no. They were already gone. Still, he was shaken. All he could recall was the name Damien.  
Damien. That name again, the one he’d called Dark. Who was Damien, to him? Had he ever even known a Damien? He couldn’t recall one. All the name brought to his mind was a vague sadness, a vague nostalgia. As if he should know who is was, but didn’t. He shook his head, standing and grunting as he stretched, old bones clicking. How old was he, he wondered? He wasn’t sure anymore. Frowning, he tried to think of a time when he had known his age, or even his birthday.  
Further from that…where had he come from? He was sure he’d been born somewhere, he’d had a family, but, much to his mounting alarm, he found he couldn’t remember them at all.  
He started to panic. Wilford Warfstache, he was Wilford Warfstache, world-famous ace reporter, right? Wasn’t that right? That’s what everyone called him, that’s how the others here knew him. So of course, he came from the Warfstache family, didn’t he? But the more he said it in his head, the worse it sounded, the more…fake. Who had the last name of Warfstache, honestly? And even his first name, his perfectly normal first name, Wilford, the one he’d known for so long, felt…wrong, now. Felt rushed.  
The more he thought, the more it sounded like two different words.  
Wilford.  
Wil Ford.  
He jumped sharply as someone knocked loudly on his door.  
“Wilford? Hey, Wilford, dude, you up yet?”  
“Jesus, Bing, let a man have his beauty sleep!” Wil snapped angrily. “Go away! Tell the studio we’re on hiatus!”  
There was a pause.  
“…seriously? Hiatus? Like, since when do you ever wanna go on-?”  
“GO!” Wil shouted, and he heard scuffling as Bing stumbled down the hall, probably wearing his Heeleys and tripping over them. On any other day, that would’ve made him laugh. Today, he scowled at his desk and pulled a flask out from under it, spinning the cap off in a smooth, practiced motion, but he paused before taking a sip.  
If he drank…would he forget again? Forget more than he already had?  
Why hadn’t it occured to him sooner that he couldn’t remember…anything?  
Wil put the flask back down, without taking a sip, and instead pulled out a legal pad and a pencil, beginning to write furiously.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had a bit more inspiration, going back and reading this one again. I'd like to finish it, I think, but I don't know how I'm going to do that, so enjoy some character development from the boys. I realize that now, years after, none of this is canon-compliant anymore, but work with me, it was written in a world where WKM had just been released. We'll get back to Winnie in a little while.

He hadn’t slept in days. That on its own wasn’t uncommon, really, but the fact that he was noticing, and more importantly, that it hurt, was throwing Wil for a loop. And he was calling himself Wil. It made his head hurt less than calling himself Wilford, even if it didn’t feel quite right yet.  
He hadn’t seen Dark yet, and had the feeling that he was being avoided, which was highly unusual. It seemed that no one else had seen Dark either, for days now, since their encounter in the hallway. He’d asked around, trying to be subtle and whatever his “normal” was, but no one seemed to have seen him after that moment. It wasn’t like Dark to completely abandon them like that. He liked to be in charge, in control of the operation as it were.  
Wil sighed, rubbing his temples in frustration as he walked, eyes screwed shut. His head was throbbing and swimming. He hadn’t had a drink in who knew how long, but the thought of alcohol made him ill. Is this what withdrawals felt like? God, the pain of it was unbearable…  
It wasn’t until he opened the door and stepped out that he realized he had no idea where he was. Hadn’t he been heading toward his office? Wil frowned at the cream-colored walls and dark trim, eyes gliding to the end of a hallway, where wide windows let out onto a stone balcony framing a green hillside, steeped in late summer sun.

He stepped further into the room, looking around with more interest as the pain in his head seemed to dull. His boots clicked on the old tile floors and echoed around the large foyer. Turning to look at the door he’d stepped through, he found a glass-inlaid front entrance, through whose patterns he could see a circular drive and sweeping lawn. He turned back and looked up the massive central staircase a little way from him, and up to the vaulted ceiling.  
The echo of his steps continued to be the only noise as he walked down the hall toward the balcony, glancing into a dining room and a kitchen that looked as if they had only just been vacated, and yet had an eerie stillness to them. There was a game room as well, in which was a poker table where a round of six or so hands looked as if they’d just been set down. He smiled at a royal flush that was spread out across the middle of the table, and could almost picture the holder dropping it there with a triumphant laugh.  
The laugh sounded much like his own. In fact, the longer he looked at this table, the more the person he pictured became…familiar. It was someone that looked remarkably like him, in khakis and red suspenders, wild hair and a bushy mustache that was black instead of pink. Looking at the other hands, he could see a figure in a familiar suit, with slicked-back hair and a nervous grin, and a butler behind him standing tall and proud, offering another round of drinks.  
He blinked, and they were gone. Suddenly he felt lightheaded.  
He wandered again toward the balcony, pushing the door open as if he were afraid of disturbing someone by making too much noise.

He saw at last that there was someone on the balcony.  
Dark had his back to Wil. He was leaning over the stone railing, clutching it hard. There were cracks in the pillars under his fingers. Unusually, he seemed to be breathing hard, and he could hear the hoarse, wet rattle of each breath that didn’t sound like any normal, healthy person’s breathing should. His suit jacket was in a messy pile by his feet, leaving him in a crisp white dress shirt that had come untucked from his slacks. Wil noticed for the first time a dark patch in the middle of his back, some long-dried-in stain he had never seen before. Of course, when had he last seen Dark without the suit jacket? When had he last seen his friend dressed in any state other than unnatural perfection?  
His head throbbed once, and the image of the man from the poker room came back to him. He realized why that suit had seemed familiar, and suddenly the name was connected to the face again, and that face was turning to look at him, so much paler than it had been and yet just as pale as it had always been.  
Dark didn’t look shocked to see him. It took Wil a long second to realize that this was the first time he could remember Dark looking at him with anything other than barely-contained anger or wry, cold amusement. It was a moment before either of them spoke.  
“You look tired, old man.”  
If Dark had been expecting him to say anything, it wasn’t that. He blinked, slowly, and turned to face him fully. Had that dark patch on the front of his shirt always been there too?  
“Wilford.”  
“Just Wil.”  
Dark nodded. “How did you get here?”  
“Don’t know.” He shrugged, leaning against the railing. Dark seemed to notice the cracks for the first time and took a step away from it. “I was just walking, and I opened a door and suddenly I was here. It’s a pretty place. Didn’t know you’d been keeping a whole house for yourself, but of course I guess you don’t just sleep in your office, do you?”  
Dark scowled, some of his usual anger returning to his face. “This is not my house.”  
“I know that. Let me joke a bit, Dames.”  
Another thing he hadn’t expected to hear. The anger drained out of Dark’s face again, replaced by confusion and…something else.  
“What did you call me?”  
“Dames. Short for Damien. You know, as that seems to be your name.”   
“It’s not- “  
“Don’t lie to me.” Wil’s voice cracked slightly, but he remained calm. “Don’t. Please.”  
There was a long moment of silence before Wil spoke again. “Why do I know that? Why does…this place,” he gestured around them, “look familiar?”  
Dark seemed to sag under the weight of his words, sinking into a metal chair and leaning heavily on the little metal table beside it. “Stop, please, Wil…you don’t know what you’re asking.”  
“You’ve always called me Wil,” he pressed, taking a step closer with confidence he didn’t feel. “What is it short for? Who am I, Damien?”  
This seemed to be what broke him, and Dark’s head fell into his hands as he groaned, the rattling returning as he took more breaths. It was a painful sound that made Wil wince.  
“No…no, I’m sorry, Dark, I didn’t mean…You’re hurt, we should get back- “  
“Don’t do that.” He sounded almost as if he were begging, looking up at him again with an uncharacteristic smile. “Don’t call me that now, with everything you’ve just said. As if you still don’t remember anything. I don’t know how long I’ll be…back, and you haven’t talked to me that clearly in a long time, William.”  
William.  
The name hit him like a ton of bricks, making him stagger in his next step, and the face aiming a sickly smile at him wasn’t Dark’s, but a younger man’s, with slicked-back hair and a flower on his lapel. It was the man from the poker table again. It was Damien.  
And the man with the khakis and the red suspenders, and the black mustache that curled just the same way, was William. Was him.  
Wil sank to his knees, nearly falling. Damien reached a hand toward him weakly, but was clearly in no condition to actually catch him, so he put his hand up and caught himself on the edge of the table, keeping him from sinking completely to the ground even though the entire world was spinning.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun times, fun times! Here's how Dark ended up back at the house in the last chapter. It's a sad way to spend a couple of days, but when you're literally fighting for control of your own body again, it's somewhat necessary. Enjoy!

Everything was pain.  
Dark stumbled through the hallway, barely able to focus on the door long enough to get to where he needed to be, and when the door opened onto the landing, he just managed to close the door before he thumped against it with a grunt and slid down to the ground.  
He lay there for a long time. How long, he didn’t know, and he didn’t think it mattered. He was staring, unblinking like a dead man, down the long staircase to the front door.

You know what you have to do.  
Shut up.

But his insistence that the voice quiet was much less intense this time. He knew that he didn’t really want it to go away…and that unnerved him.  
It was another long while before he realized another important thing…he was cold. He was never cold anymore, never felt anything anymore, but yes, when he focused on it, he realized the tile beneath him was cold against his hands when he splayed them out beneath him. It was actually cold. Not uncomfortably so, but he wasn’t an excellent judge of that given that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt cold. Well, no. That wasn’t entirely true.  
A small room, with a table in the middle.  
A crystal ball, falling to the ground in a shattered mess.  
Yelling. Fighting about something. He was trying to make her see, tell her that her actions had consequences, that you can’t just play with things like this, you’ll get hurt, Celine-  
Another wave of pain shot through him, and Dark sucked in a sharp breath. He hunched forward onto the tile, his head thudding against it with a louder crack than there should have been. It felt like his body was trying to rip itself in two, and the pain of it was so intense he couldn’t move. This was so much worse than it had been in so long. He let out a long, low howl of agony, and heard glass shatter somewhere beyond him, more tiles cracking and splintering under him. If he could have opened his eyes, he was sure he would have seen everything in monochrome grey, with sharp outlines in cyan and scarlet. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t open his eyes, he couldn’t move, if he moved, he would fall apart, he would burst at the seams, he would descend back into that place that he knew but shouldn’t know, that darkness that was silent and empty and that pulled at him as if it were going to tear him apart, and he couldn’t be taken there, he wouldn’t, not now, not now-!  
There was a hand on his shoulder.  
His whole body froze and he gasped again, as if he still needed to breathe. His eyes shot open, and slowly found their focus on a pair of thick, brown combat boots. Slowly, painfully, his eyes panned up the khaki pants to the oversized shirt and suspenders, the brown messenger bag, and the face with the big round glasses, looking at him with so much concern that his heart, his long-forgotten useless heart, jumped in his chest.  
“Winnie,” he croaked, and she seemed pleased that he could speak.  
“Damien?” He grunted, expecting more pain at the name. She quickly took her hand from his shoulder and stood up. “Oh…sorry, I didn’t realize. I-I heard something up here, and came to look, and you looked like you needed help, so I-“  
“Don’t explain.” The venom that his voice had had the last time they spoke was missing this time, replaced entirely by tiredness.  
She nodded, hands clasped behind her back again. “Right. Okay. Well…can you stand? We should get you to somewhere you can sit down, preferably not the top of a set of stairs, I should think. Can I help you do that, at least?”  
He looked at the hand she was offering him. It was the same hand that had been on his shoulder a moment ago. He knew that his aura was out of control right now, could see it seeping into the tiles around him and the walls, draining the color from everything it touched. Her hand should have been grey, the same color as his, and stiff as death. It should have hurt her tremendously to touch him. But her hand was soft and pink and young. In fact, looking more closely, it seemed that his aura was avoiding her completely, as if it were consciously choosing not to hurt her, not to touch her…  
Oh. Of course it was. Of course…she was.  
He reached out tentatively to take it, and winced when the bones in his hand shifted as she gripped him with surprising strength and pulled him to his feet though he was a good deal taller than she was. For a moment after he was standing, he didn’t drop her hand, but instead looked at it, holding his, as if he physically couldn’t look away.  
Winnie was looking at it in much the same way. “Your hand…it’s very cold.” She turned his hand with both of hers then, looking at his palm, tracing a finger over the lines of it. “And these scars…it looks as if you’ve been beaten. Scars like this come from breaking bones so badly they stick out.” She looked up at his face again, and for once, he didn’t know what she was seeing. Her eyes searched his face, taking in the scars she found there. Taking in the scars she could see on his neck, on the bit of his chest where his shirt buttons had come undone, then roving again to his face until she was looking him in the eye, properly. Her eyes narrowed slightly, curiously. “What happened to you?”  
All he could do was shake his head. She let go of his hand, seemingly feeling the moment of intimacy was gone, and flushing slightly in embarrassment.  
She led him down the stairs, watching him walk as if she were afraid he would fall. For all he knew he might. It wasn’t like him to be this weak. Winnie walked down the hallway, past the kitchen and the game room and out onto the balcony.  
“Some sunshine never hurt anyone,” she said into the uncomfortable silence.  
“You seem to know your way around.”  
“I…not really. It just…um, I just feel as if…well, I know it sounds ridiculous, but it seems like-“  
“The house is taking you wherever you need to go?”  
She turned her head sharply toward him. “I…yes. How did you…?”  
“I’ve been here a long time.”  
“You said this wasn’t your house, last time.” He nodded, but said nothing, so she continued. “And last time, you said…you said I shouldn’t be here. You were angry, and of course you had every right to be if I was trespassing, but it’s not your house. But you’ve been here a long time. So why were you upset? Why are you here?” She paused, studying him again. “Who are you?”  
“You ask a lot of questions, and assume too much. That kind of thinking and acting will get you in trouble.” She winced slightly, and he was sorry for that, and sighed. “But fair is fair. Why are you here? What led you to looking for your parents, for…Celine, and William?”  
“Well doesn’t everyone want to know where they came from? Who they are?” He was silent, and knew she realized he wanted more of an answer. She looked away from him, walking to the railing and resting on it, looking out over the hills.  
“When I was little, I was told never to ask. They didn’t want me, and that’s all I needed to know. They wouldn’t even give me a name for so long. It was like they hated me, but they were all always so interested in me, the teachers and the fosters and the caretakers in the orphanage. No one wanted me, but everyone wanted to look at me, like I was some…freak. Some zoo animal, or something. Big game that they weren’t allowed to hunt.” The comparison made his lip twitch. It sounded very like her father.  
“I overheard them talking one night, a caretaker and one of the teachers for the little kids, I don’t remember their names. But I heard one of them say, ‘Doesn’t she look just like Celine, though?’ And I knew they must mean my mother. I asked the next day if she’d been named Celine, but no one would answer me. The looks they gave me were enough though.  
“So I did some digging. I walked to the library and looked up Celines from around when I was born, and an article came up, a few years later than my birth year. It was a press photo for some event for the mayor, and it was talking about his sister. ‘Mayor Noir’s Strange Sister’. Said she was into the occult and all that, that she’d been married to some famous actor friend of the mayor’s, and that she’d gone off the radar the year I was born. And it had a picture.”  
She was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes. Winnie pulled her heavy bag up and flipped it open, rifling through it until she found what she was looking for, and handed it to him.  
He looked down at the little scrap of paper. A printout of the article she was talking about. And yes, there in the upper right corner was a picture of Celine. His heart gave another funny thump. She looked so young, and she was smiling. It’d been so long since he’d seen her face…  
After a moment, Winnie continued. “Well…I knew that was her. She looked so much like me, it couldn’t not be her. So I tried to look up what happened to her, and…nothing. The records just stopped after some articles about her divorce from Fischbach. After that, it was just a death certificate. Missing, presumed dead.”  
He frowned then, looking up at her. “How did you know to come here, then?”  
Surprisingly, she smiled. “A local guy. The waiter at my favorite café, actually. He saw me looking at the articles one day, and looked really spooked. When I asked him why, he just said that there were some things you didn’t talk about. I pressed him though, and he finally told me that he used to work for the Fischbachs. He was their butler. He told me about a party that Mark’d had…about the one where he died. He wouldn’t give me any details, kept saying the house was a den of evil or something. But that was enough for me. It gave me somewhere to start. At the end.”  
He chuckled slightly, standing from the little metal chair and joining her at the railing. He was warm (another first) in the sunshine. “Perhaps Ben was right. Perhaps there are things better left untouched. That night was…a difficult one.” He shrugged off his jacket, and heard her gasp when she saw the old stains on his shirt. “Don’t panic, they’re not fresh.”  
“My god, why would you wear something like that? That looks like-“  
“It is.”  
She looked horrified, taking a step back. It was almost funny to him that this was the thing to scare her off. “Why…?”  
“As I said. Some things are better left untouched. Dead things should stay dead.” The old venom creeped back into his voice slightly, but he knew he was in trouble as he heard cracking. Winnie took another step back. “I don’t think you would believe me if I told you what happened here.”  
There was the sound of the front door opening and thudding shut. Both of them turned to look.  
“Hide. Get out of sight.” He wasn’t sure why he said it, but knew that he couldn’t let her be seen. Whatever it was would have to get through him first. Winnie ducked behind a plant, just behind a pillar on the house.  
He turned and looked out over the hills, taking in more breaths. This day had been…long. Far too long. And he had seen her again. And as he stood there, in the sun, feeling fierce protectiveness toward this girl he barely knew, he felt suddenly more like himself than he had felt since that night, when everything went wrong. He was Damien, if only for a little while.  
It was enough to make him force down a sob, which dissolved into deep, rattling breaths that shook every broken, unhealing rib. It hurt, but he was almost glad that it did. It was nice to feel anything at all while he was completely himself.


End file.
